I explore split personalities with Shirley Jackson

The Bird's Nest

By Shirley Jackson

I’ve been thinking about the features of the domestic thriller genre, and so far I’ve noticed: 

• At least one character has to be in mortal danger
• Family conflict--marital, parental, or fraternal—drives the plot
• Conflict stems from criminal activity or insanity (sometimes both)
• At least one character’s true motives, identity, or personality remains hidden, and the revelation brings the plot to its climax.

 There may be more features in this genre I have yet to discover, but Shirley Jackson’s “The Bird’s Nest” has all them … in just one character. The novel is about a young woman with multiple personality disorder and four distinct personalities (Elizabeth, Beth, Betsy, and Bess). Interestingly, Jackson's novel and predates the hugely popular “The Three Faces of Eve” by three years (novel published in 1954, while the Eve book and movie came out in 1957).

Jackson is less interested in the causes for Elizabeth’s disassociative personality (though glimpses of a chaotic home life and child abuse are part of the landscape) than in the sibling rivalry between the personalities and in the way others respond to them.

In truth, none of Elizabeth’s personalities seem all that crazy on their own, though the “sister” personalities, who range in age from 16 to 24, compete and manipulate each other in ways that sometimes lead to violence. Nope, the really crazy ones are the people closest to Elizabeth, her psychiatrist and aunt.

In two long sections narrated by Dr. Wright, Jackson establishes that he is a prissy, jealous, misogynistic, and egotistical jackass. He keeps a detailed dossier on Elizabeth that he seems to hope bears some resemblance in style to his literary hero, William Makepeace Thackery, and he prefers the weepiest, and clingiest of the personalities, Beth. He likens Betsy to a demon and despises Bess’s arrogance and callousness. Elizabeth, so sickly from trying to contain all these personalities, the one who might elicit the most sympathy, makes little impression on him.

Aunt Morgen, who also has her own section, has her own personality problems. Like Elizabeth’s personalities, Morgen still lives in the shadow of her pretty sister, Elizabeth’s dead mother. She has remade herself as her sister’s opposite number, but deep down she shares some of her sister’s worst flaws and remains damaged and self-deluded. The fact that she has custody of her sister’s orphaned child and the trust of her deceased brother-in-law, with whom she was secretly in love, are not enough to help her come to terms with seething anger and resentments.

This fragmented narrative style meshes nicely with the fragmentation of Elizabeth's personalities. We see bits and pieces of Elizabeth's life as in a shards of a shattered mirror, some elements not quite coming together, others missing entirely. And Jackson has the restraint to leave things that way, allowing the reader to enter into the confusion and struggle Elizabeth and her "sisters" have to cope with.

Toward the end of the novel, Dr. Wright gives a long disquisition at a dinner party about human sacrifice. It’s a rather jolting and unsavory topic, but, in the end, that’s what the book is about: The sacrifices we make—especially women with their maternal sacrifices, sacrifices to societal norms, sacrifices to please others—that slowly kill us.